Started on my Courbet hull today after cleaning out the shop. Previous project was a Torqueflite 727 transmission rebuild for my 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Previous transmission didn't last long behind the mopar 440 (7.2L) big block I built and swapped in, so had to tear it down and rebuild it. Now that the transmission is whole again it was relocated to the dolly to roll out to the Jeep when the weather permits, and I was able to clean up the whole shop and workstation to get really working on Courbet. After having seen how effective the Courbets were during the 2019 battling season I was/am super stoked to build this boat. I've never had a really "slug it out" battleship, every boat I've battled has been 24 seconds and over 5 feet long. So Courbet, being my first dreadnought type battleship, is a refreshing change of pace both in terms of construction and in terms of operational capability. I've got casemates! OMG! Anyway, construction is going to be influenced by Jean Bart and what I've picked up over the last year battling a big baguette. Drivetrain is going to be dual 1000kv 35mm propdrive outrunners into Traxxas gearboxes, down to 4mm shafts through some 3/8" OD stainless steel stuffing tubes to 45mm 4 blade props. ESC's are Hobbyking X-Car 120a units. The propshaft/stuffing tube assemblies were all built out of spare Jean Bart parts, and they were super beefy for Bart so they're extremely overkill for Courbet. Sounds like they're perfect! The one thing I learned with a similar shaft setup on Bart (which was promptly upgraded) was the 4mm shafts need adapting to the easy to find 5mm bore gears in the gearbox. Bart had stainless bushings made to slide over the shafts and allow the 5mm gear to work properly. They proved to be a nuisance and were deleted in favor of larger 5mm shafts. On Courbet's shafts, I am going to weld the stainless adapters to the propeller shafts to ensure engagement 100% of the time. The major downside is this removes the ability to pull the shaft out of the boat via the prop, the prop will need to be removed and the shaft extracted up into the boat. Minor maintenance issue, but I can live with it. If it proves to be a problem, the Bart solution will be implemented and Courbet will also receive massive 5mm shafts. The props are Raboesch 45mm 4 blade, I had very similar props on Jean Bart (obviously those were much larger) before I swapped to Kort style props. I am going to give these a shot on Courbet because I have them, can always swap out later if necessary. Pump is a standard BC type with a 28mm can 2200kv outrunner, same setup as in Bart, using a Hobbyking 60a ESC. I've had good results with this setup (so long as it works!) so I'm planning to run it here, but I am also building a drop-in brushed motor solution in case of failures. Fire control is where things are a little weird. I have a stockpile of industrial surplus 24v Spartan Scientific solenoids, so I'm planning on using them instead of dropping a ton of cash on more 6v solenoids. Right now the plan is to run the two 11.1v batteries on two circuits, one battery powering drive and the 2nd battery powering pump. Then I'll have leads connecting them in series just for the firing circuits. Time will tell if this is a good idea or not, the alternative is to just get a small 6S pack just to operate the guns. Anyhoo, enough typing. Here's some pics of me setting the shafts in the boat. Tomorrow I'll hopefully be able to give some more. I'm not very good with fiberglass so we'll see how this turns out.
Courbet's shafts are in and fiberglassed both inside and outside the hull. Cut a piece of aluminum angle to the correct length and stretched the hull to the correct beam. Waiting for E6000 to dry, then the aluminum will be scoured with very rough sandpaper and fiberglassed into the hull.
On the shaft adapters, female 4mm bullet connectors are 4mm id 5mm od. I had good luck with them for 4mm to 5mm adapters.
I just put 2 and 2 together, same username on FSJN. I'm WT91. I'm glad at least one other person on this planet enjoys pain and suffering as much as I do to own an FSJ and do this hobby. I just painted mine after getting home from NATs. It's been an "Offroad quality driveway restoration" for about a year now. Sometimes it's not the easiest balancing two crazy hobbies.
Put motor mounts on stuffing tubes and into hull. To try and get things as perfect as possible I cut out around the stuffing tubes in the hull to recess the motor mounts down and in. Didn't come out too bad. Used a little bit of filler and then fiberglass mat to make the hull bottom whole. Will fill from the top down with epoxy.
It's expired and used for scraping epoxy and filler. The government has already given away all my personal information thanks to all these data breaches we (DHS/TSA) keep having so not concerned. But I did crop it out on second thought just for laughs.
Small update, Subdeck is in and drying. After the E6k that I used sets up, subdeck will get thoroughly coated with west systems and then fiberglass matted into the hull. Poured some epoxy+filler into the stern to fill in the prop shaft/gearbox areas, also added some mat back there to solidly make the gearboxes 1 with the hull. Made a small mistake with the Alumilite 610 foam I have, its my first time using it and I really underestimated what "10x the volume expanded" meant. No issue, used a 18" long demolition sawzall blade to trim the foam back. Bow impenetrable is completely filled, and the first few hull windows worth of hull are filled right to the bottom of the window. The actual water channel will begin immediately aft of this pour. Once all the foam is in the hull, I will lay some mat+epoxy over it for strength. All components (batteries, bottle+reg, escs, etc) will have nice little recesses to live in. Man, I have to clean up the workbench.
Haven't updated in a while. Been busy building stuff or designing stuff in Fusion360, haven't had a ton of time to type. So, where to begin. I guess we will go in chronological order. The great foamening in the ship's nose was a pretty good success, so I decided to emulate that amidships. To make sure I left room for the components I needed, I used a 3d model I made of the hull to create 3d printed trays that contour to the bottom for all internal components. I then coated these in painters tape because most stuff doesn't like to stick to that. The battery trays were left in the boat to keep the batteries located and to serve as protection vs penetration. Once the foam was poured I pulled the forms out and started potting electronics. Played around with the shafts some. Took 3 tries to get the rudder where I wanted it. Oops. Measure once, drill 3 times and wobble it out some. Overall, satisfied with the final product. We will see how it performs. Bought some fittings for the gas system, decided to go with the push-connect fittings I've seen in other's boats vs the traditional barbs and clamps I have used in the past. Got this assortment on Amazon for $25, figured that was a good deal. Reworked my brushless pump shield/esc mount with lessons learned in 2019. Oversized the pump motor hole even more for clearance and printed in ABS for strength. Not sure why it came out the way it did, who cares, it's functional. Time to cut out 1/8" ply for the decks. Used the @Gettysburg114th blue painters tape method. Works well every time. Printed some of the superstructure to make sure the barbette holes ended up in the correct spots. So far so good. Started thinking about cannons. Started making my first "V1.2" cannon. Carried over some ideas from Bart's guns which were my V1.1. Changed breech to the more available style and not going to bother with direct-mounted solenoids this time. Only have pics of the breech+barrel which I've been using for mocking up. Stainless tight bore barrel, foster breech machined with a 4 flute center cutting end mill I got on amazon made out of chinesium for $8. Guns will have big tube feed with big tube mag feed and big tube bypass to the breech. Plastic pistons, @Beaver springs. Once I had the breech+barrel assembly made up I took some measurements so I could play around in Fusion360 some more. Made barbettes, turrets, and integrated mounts. The sidemount barbettes are set up to be a tight push-fit for the gun breech and they work wonderfully. The dual stern mount in the rear barbette needed to be iterated once but on the 2nd try is perfecto. Each barbette has magnet mounts for the corresponding turret.
Pretty dang spiffing there, bud (I like the magnet turret mounts, maybe even better than 1/8" nylon rod.)
Small update. Got sidetracked building an enclosure/cabinet for my 3d printers out in the garage so I can print ABS and also reclaim my spare bedroom from 3d printer mayhem. Internal layout pic as she sits right now. Still need to locate the BC board and solenoids when they show up. Just got confirmation that my BC order has finally shipped, here's to hoping I can wrap this thing up in 9 days. Gun layout as of the last time I took pics. Right now she has all 3 aft guns in, mags made, etc. Need to pull them back out and take care of the plumbing. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be done with the 3d printer cabinet distraction so I can get some good hours in on Courbet. Not much left, but there's enough that I'm feeling the time crunch.
Waiting on solenoids to arrive. Just need to locate solenoids, finish up their wiring/plumbing, and sheet the boat at this point. She should be done in time for departure next thursday but I'm not so sure I'll have the time (or the weather) to conduct any sort of sea trials.
Quick pic dump as I'm off to Valentine's day date with the girlfriend. CAD designed and 3d printed are cool and all, but sometimes just do what works. Like a screw through a hose clamp.
AAR for Feb 20-23 2020: Courbet did pretty well. It was a mad rush to get her finished there at the end, with the waterline just getting put on Wednesday before putting her in the car for the drive down. She's a bit of a mess internally with the hoses for the stern guns, more on that later. Sheeting this thing is a nightmare, I probably should've been supervised while attempting this as I had no idea how to sheet a boat with a stringer or casemates or a double stringer or maybe all of these things. Friday it was very cold and we only had time to do one battle as we were getting kicked out of the park at 3pm. For me it was mainly what racecar guys call a test and tune. The moment the boat hit the water, I lost one of my 4 blade 45mm props I had gotten off Ebay for cheap. Uh oh. Luckily we had a handful of Vac-u-boat injection molded props that were being given away at NATs 2019. I used the prop shaft itself as a tap and screwed it into the plastic with some red loctite followed by a jam nut tightened against the prop to keep it from coming off. I was pleasantly surprised, the plastic props held up great and the ship performed very well. I mossed up, ran it aground in reverse, and rubbed sterns with plenty of boats and the plastic props held up no issue. I am a fan! I had some issues with my guns losing their piston settings. The big tube everywhere was breaking the superglue I had put to keep the Tees in place and causing them to move. I managed to get all 4 guns functional with the help of lots of zip ties to keep hoses in place. However, this caused an issue with the deck not wanting to sit down properly. I temporarily fixed this by using #8 screws to hold the stern deck in place for this battle. During combat, Courbet is a little beast. The dual sterns are brutal, the haymaker is a torpedo tube, the bow sidemount is only 25 rounds but it gets the job done for anyone who thinks that side is undefended. I put lots of holes in a bunch of boats for only a bit of damage taken in return. I did have two sinks, both times due to my boat triggering U-boat emergency dive mode in reverse. One of the sinks the boat drove itself in reverse so aggressively that it did a backflip, to the entertainment of all involved. Things I learned (which was the whole point of this early year battle): Need to change gearing. I'm at 9% endpoint to make speed in forward. Going to swap from 1.5:1 to 2:1 and call it good. I love the turbo reverse for quick stops/reverse surges, but holy crap it engages dive planes when you go backwards. Gun Tubing: Going to redo all cannons with 90* clippard 1/8" 10-32 barbs for the main gas feed. This should help a lot. Also going to redo solenoid connections with elbows to help, instead of straight connectors forcing the tubing to curve. Rear Deck/Deck Seal: After the above is done, I need a serious deck seal in the stern. If my magnets can't hold the deck down and seal well with whatever seal I come up with, then I'll need a mechanical hold down mechanism. I'd prefer to not have to screw the deck down every battle, but I also like to not sink if I even glance at the reverse throttle. Gas Bottle: I was regularly running out of gas with my 5oz bottle and icing it up badly. Going to upgrade to a BC 7oz bottle and use the 5oz in Invincible/Suffren. Rudder: The rudder is actually lower than the props by about .25". Plan is to basically belt sand the crap out of the stern to tuck the rudder up higher and get more of the prop wash. All in all, I call this boat a moderate success. Needs some small improvements, but I can definitely see what all the other Courbet guys were talking about with this boat. It's blast to drive and it's extremely competitive. I'm not afraid to pull up next to any boat in this boat.
These friench ships always looked kind of nice on the water. there are 3D printed cannons and turrets available at the turrets are similar to The province
I'm not super keen on 3d printed cannons, but @Kotori87 and his brother's successes with their pre-dreadnoughts is slowly convincing me to give them a try.
Stupid text to speech. Yes, his bow gun is one of my designs. There are files here for some of them, I run them on my Provence, and files are in the resources secton
My balsa has consumed many rounds from Greg's printed cannons (and mercifully I've also avoided a great many), they're damn effective and he keeps refining the design.
